


I Left My Heart In Navarro Part 2: The Devil in Disguise

by StellaDraco



Series: I Left My Heart In Navarro [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Betrayal, Brotherhood of Steel - Freeform, Caesar's Legion, Distrust, Enclave, Execution, Multi, Not Quite Human, Plague Dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:19:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2559470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaDraco/pseuds/StellaDraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The very short second "chapter" of the work.  Now we see the courier, and where his allegiance lies, although Arcade doesn't know that.  Yet. <br/>The first chapter set up a lot of fairly important information, so I'd recommend at least skimming that, although I think that the first chapter is one of the worst as far as quality goes.  I was working through emotions and running on next to no sleep for most of it.  I may edit it, but I'm not yet sure how to make it work better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Left My Heart In Navarro Part 2: The Devil in Disguise

Likewise, they walked in silence along the road south.  Arcade was surprised when Phoenix finally spoke even though it was simply to ask, “What’s that?”  Ahead, a small man scrambled back from no less than five cazadores.  He must have been only five feet tall, nearly a foot shorter than Phoenix and much shorter than Arcade.  His hair was as black and silky as Phoenix’s, but he seemed to keep it carefully styled while Phoenix mostly kept his out of his face.  The man wore a neat black and white tuxedo and carried a beat-up machete.  Phoenix ran ahead before Arcade could even draw his plasma defender.  He ran like a deathclaw, Arcade noticed a bit nervously, he tilted his torso forward and led with his head.  The man ahead of them noticed Phoenix and the almost crazed way that he was running, as well as the modified thermic lance in his hands.  The cazadores were diced and seared in seconds, leaving the little man on his back in the dirt, catching his breath.  

“Man, what _are_ you?  How the hell can you fight like that?!”  Phoenix looked down at him silently, visibly worried that this man might already hate him.  

“His name is Phoenix, who are you?”  Arcade had caught up and now that he was this close he realized how handsome the man on the ground actually was.  This man was good-looking to the point that he had to wonder how he even managed to look so perfect despite the Mojave being what it was.  Arcade tried not to blush as he helped the man to his feet and introduced himself.  

“Ah, a Follower’s doctor.  I’m surprised to see you all the way out here; this is dangerous territory, might I ask what you’re doing?  I’m Nero, by the way.”  He smiled.  He was charming, and both Arcade and Phoenix realized this.  Phoenix was not taken in by that charm, however.  Something about the man unsettled him.  He smelled like darkness and technology, Phoenix thought, although he couldn’t place why.  

Nero stood shakily and collapsed.  It quickly became apparent that he’d been stung by the cazadores and Arcade set about saving the man’s life.  Nero’s eyes rolled back in his head and they guess that he had passed out.  

“I don’t like him,” Phoenix remarked, watching Arcade, “There’s something...not right about him.”

“Not to dismiss you off-hand, but you’re hardly in a position to say that.”

Phoenix sighed.  “Sorry, but...he just...I can’t place it, he reminds me of...bad things.  Just...be careful around him, okay?”  

Nero still seemed unconscious, so Arcade took the opportunity to explain.  “I guess we’ll stay here for the night until Nero can travel.  It will probably be best if he stays with me; he doesn’t look like he can handle himself in the wastes.  We’ll...drop you off, and then head back to Freeside.”

Phoenix nodded.  “Yeah.  No offense, but the Enclave really screwed me over with this whole weapon-whether-you-want-to-or-not thing.  Damn, why does my life have to be Plague Dogs...”  

“The Enclave screwed over a lot of people, you included.  I never said they were good over all, just...you can’t help what you’re born into, I guess, that’s part of why I try to help people so much.”

Phoenix gave him a look that clearly showed what he longed for at the moment.  

Arcade sighed, “Phoenix, it’s too dangerous, you can’t be around people in case the virus activates.  Or whatever it is.  You were engineered to be a weapon, and I’m sorry, but you can’t risk the harm you might do.  You’re just too dangerous.”

Phoenix sighed.  “Doesn’t mean I don’t hate that.”  He set off to hunt.  

They ate and fed Nero when he woke.  He explained briefly why he’d been out there.  He claimed that he’d been heading up to New Vegas from the Mojave Outpost to gamble, Phoenix didn’t buy it.  Something about the man made him suspect a mission.  Nero definitely worked for someone, Phoenix just couldn’t be sure who.  

Phoenix slept uneasily and woke early, laying with his eyes closed to think.  He didn’t want them to realize that he was awake; he wanted to stay with Arcade for as long as possible.  He tried to prepare himself for spending the rest of his life with nothing but deathclaws for company.  

As Phoenix lay still, he heard quiet motion nearby.  After a moment, the motion stopped and he heard a voice a bit farther away speaking very softly.  Nero had gotten up and stepped aside to talk into a radio, Phoenix realized.  

“Vulpes?  It’s Aranae.  My primary objective has run into some minor difficulties, the area is overrun with deathclaws, giant radscorpions, and cazadores, but I’ll find them, you can be sure of that.  I’ve found something else I think Caesar might wish to know about.  I found two men, one of whom I believe may be an Enclave operative.  The man he is escorting is engineered by the Enclave to be a weapon.  From what I can tell, he may carry some sort of virus.  Shall I investigate further?”  

There was a pause and a voice cracked over the radio.  “The mighty Caesar has seen fit to extend your deadline with the Brotherhood in order to allow you to investigate this more urgent matter of the Enclave virus.  Given your previous work for us, we expect that you will not disappoint.”  The connection faded to static and Phoenix heard Nero put the radio away.  

Phoenix opened his eyes and sat up, debating how to get Arcade alone to tell him what he had heard when a burst of gunfire cut through the camp.  Nero crouched behind a rock, taking cover as Phoenix leapt to his feet.  Arcade woke immediately, but was, understandably, a bit dazed, being woken by combat.  He stifled a yelp, not fully aware of what was happening at first.  It took him a few seconds to get his bearings and draw his plasma defender.  

In the meantime, Phoenix, who despite everything, had also been jarred from his thoughts to combat and thus was not thinking clearly, saw the ten Scorpions gang members attacking them and charged.  In his haste, he completely forgot about his weapons, although they had always been a newer addition to his gear and he could easily go without them.  Five of the Scorpions hesitated, seeing this clearly crazed man charging them unarmed.  Then they noticed his teeth.  Two of them just ran, one dropping his gun in his haste.  Another three froze in place, two of them soiled themselves.  The rest concentrated all their fire on Phoenix, frantically trying to bring him down before he could reach them.  

Like a freight train, Phoenix hit the first gunman.  He felt the bullets pelting him and he felt a few of them even penetrate his flesh, but he was still in control of his actions.  He slammed his shoulder into the first man, knocking him down, and then punched his right shoulder, carefully angling and controlling the punch to break the collar bone in such a way as to ensure that the man would not be able to use a gun.  Out of bullets already, one of the gunmen slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of Phoenix’s skull.  Normally, such a blow would have barely hurt, but the man was strong, and Phoenix had been straightening his back into the blow.  Phoenix felt something snap, followed by a blinding pain.  

For a brief moment, Phoenix stood very still, his sentient brain failing to process through the pain and his modified, instinct-driven, reptilian brain taking over his body.  The Scorpions continued to shower him with bullets and the one who had run out continued to pound his gun into Phoenix, doing no serious damage at this point.  Phoenix’s pupils had narrowed to slits.  When his body moved again, no one, not even Arcade, who had now started shooting into the fray, could quite follow the motion.  

Those nightmarish jaws opened and whipped to the side, crunching through the neck of the nearest Scorpion and swallowing what they ripped free.  Ignoring the blood that nearly blinded him, Phoenix swiped at another Scorpion, sending the man flying.  His fangs tore through another man’s rib cage and he paused to devour the man’s organs.  

Arcade stopped shooting, half afraid that he would hit Phoenix and half afraid that Phoenix was the one he should be aiming at.  That was no longer the meek, friendly man, that was a deathclaw in an almost human body.  

In less than five minutes, the Scorpions had been reduced to mangled carcasses.  Phoenix stooped towards one of the bodies, as if about to start eating, at which point Arcade almost shot him, but instead the young man collapsed, landing heavily in the dust.  Both Nero and Arcade rushed towards him, the former hanging back a bit more than the latter.  

Phoenix had passed out, but he came to a few seconds later.  His eyes open and his pupils back to normal.  Arcade waited until he sat up to ask a bit angrily, “Has that happened before?”  He was intentionally trying not to sound quite as horrified and disgusted as he felt, but he could only do so much.  

Phoenix looked sheepish for a moment and then sighed, becoming more apologetic.  “Yes.  Sometimes if I...if I become too injured in combat...I black out.  I don’t know for sure what happens, but I suspect that I become...an animal, of sorts.  Sorry.  Look, I would have told you, but...with everything else...”  

“Phoenix, I thought you were being honest with me when you told me that you didn’t know of any way that you would be a danger to innocent people, but this...  This is something that I needed to know, it’s not like you can control this, or...”  He had started to say that isolation wouldn’t help if Phoenix became an animal.  He still wasn’t sure if he could kill Phoenix even if he had to.  Besides, isolation might help, Arcade told himself, as long as no one ran into a hive of deathclaws and happened to attack Phoenix.  As long as Phoenix only lost control like that when he was attacked.  If Phoenix lost control like that randomly, he could be worse than a deathclaw, partly because people might not expect him to act like that.  It might be better to just kill him, Arcade considered, but he wasn’t sure he could do that.  As long as Phoenix didn’t show signs of losing control more randomly or otherwise prove to be even more dangerous...  

Nero quietly took that all in, not asking anything and both Arcade and Phoenix frowned at him, wondering what sort of person didn’t even ask questions about what had just happened.  

Nero saw an opportunity, if not two.  “I understand that people have secrets,” Nero explained and shrugged, “and sometimes, those secrets can’t be shared.  This seems to be like that, so I won’t ask.”

Arcade found himself quickly growing to like the man, whatever Phoenix felt about him.  It occurred to him that Phoenix may actually be a bit jealous of Nero, even subconsciously.  Phoenix had said himself that he didn’t have much experience with people; this uncalled for suspicion could easily be his reaction to jealousy.  

For the length of the road, the stretch of 15 that they were following was packed with mutated animals, gangs, and everything else that might attack them.  To make matters worse, a particularly chaotic attack by cazadores left the three of them temporarily lost, and they wandered for half the day before getting their bearings again.  They camped on a hill across from quarry junction.  With Phoenix around, Arcade wasn’t too worried about the deathclaws being so close, and Nero seemed to pick up on that calm.  He relaxed, for the most part, although he was still quiet, and he kept glancing towards the quarry whenever they heard a particularly loud roar.  

Normally, Nero would have told jokes or stories while they ate in the hopes of making his company trust him more, but he’d picked up on the air of sorrow and dread that hung over the pair of secretive men like dry in the desert air.  He stayed respectfully quiet, hoping that that would serve his purposes just as well.  

Arcade and Phoenix both slept restlessly that night.  Around four a.m., Phoenix sank into a deep sleep and Arcade seemed peaceful enough that Nero dared to make his move.  He drew an empty syringe from his bag and crept over to Phoenix.  Phoenix lay with one arm out beside him, and Nero gently gripped that arm.  The weaponized man was very pale, and the skin at the crook of his arm was almost translucent.  It was effortless for Nero to find and tap the vein.  

The first stab of pain didn’t wake Phoenix, but the familiar feeling of blood being drawn brought him to a dream about his past, about the monster that he had once been treated as and about how he might still be that monster.  He snapped his eyes open as the dream Phoenix tore Brutus apart and those eyes, now slit-pupiled, stared wildly into Nero’s face.  Phoenix didn’t see the fear in Nero’s eyes, he just saw the needle.  In his crazed half-asleep post-nightmare terror, that glass and metal tube brought back a thousand memories of the pain and torment he’d endured at the hands of Enclave and Brotherhood scientists.  Phoenix snarled and lunged as Nero snatched the filled needle from his arm and concealed it in his jacket.  

The loud snarl woke Arcade.  He jolted to his feet and drew his plasma defender before he had even realized what was happening.  Phoenix lunged at Nero, who deflected his jaws, but fell backwards down the hill in the process.  The frenzied experiment launched after him, leaping like a wild animal.  Arcade pursued, trying and failing to catch Phoenix’s long coat and pull him back.  Nero held his sheathed machete like a shield and caught it between Phoenix’s snapping jaws.  Phoenix pulled back off the machete, clearly intelligent from the method he used.  He feigned to the right and swiped an arm that way, hooking Nero’s arm and breaking his bone with the strength of the strike.  The machete went flying into the darkness.  Phoenix dove, fully intending to sink his fangs through Nero’s ribs and devour him.  A well aimed shove foiled his aim, and instead Phoenix raked his teeth across Nero’s shoulder, leaving a nasty wound, but doing no serious damage.  Loosing a feral shriek, the crazed hybrid dove at the source of the shove.  He pressed his fingertips into ribs and shoulders as if he had the claws of a real deathclaw.  He twisted his head to the side and went for the throat.  Phoenix froze as his teeth brushed the warm, soft skin.  His eyes returned to normal and his tense muscles relaxed.  Realizing what he had almost done, Phoenix fell backward into the dirt, narrowly missing Nero.  He sat sprawled on his back, his torso propped up on his elbows and one leg turned out to the side.  He could still feel his heart racing and it took several minutes for it to calm as dawn crept in around them.  Arcade sat very still, nearly mirroring Phoenix’s horrified posture and expression.  He’d felt the tips of each of Phoenix’s fangs dig into his throat and, rubbing his neck, he realized that they’d drawn blood.  Through all his long years of dangerous living, Arcade had never felt more immanently close to death.  He and Phoenix stared at each other for several long, painful minutes.  

Nero had already recovered.  He bandaged his shoulder and sat down on a rock above them, looking down the hill as the duo processed what had just happened.  

Phoenix thought back to what he had done, but it was all a blur.  His nightmares faded into reality and he could no longer place quite where one became the other.  He knew how very bad that was, and he already could see only one solution, especially because he knew that he sometimes sleepwalked.  “Arcade, I’m sorry.”

“That can’t make up for this.  Do you know what set you off?”

Phoenix hesitated and then shrugged, “I don’t know.  I think...I think it was a dream.”  

Phoenix could see how much that statement alarmed Arcade from the look in his eyes.  “Phoenix...”

“I know.”  Phoenix sat up and shifted his legs, almost kneeling.  He waited like that.  Arcade got the gist.  He swallowed.  

“Okay.”  

Nero, understanding as well, took the loaded anti-material rifle from the pile of Phoenix’s gear and handed it to Arcade, although his interest was more in the spectacle of watching the two men suffer.  

Arcade stood and took the gun.  He wanted to say something to comfort Phoenix, but couldn’t find the right words.  He wasn’t even sure if he could go through with it.  

Phoenix sat very still, just waiting.  He watched Arcade very calmly, making no attempt to move.  He wasn’t trying to unnerve Arcade, but he succeeded, even with those yellow eyes.  They stood in stalemate for a long time, Phoenix kneeling and waiting and Arcade watching him uncomfortably down the barrel of the gun.  

They were so absorbed in each other, that neither noticed when Nero slunk down the hillside to assist.  Arcade only realized that the small and handsome man was beside him when a strong and very clean finger slid over his own around the trigger and pulled.  

The recoil of the weapon nearly knocked Arcade over because he hadn’t really expected it.  He fell back into Nero and the two of them barely regained their balance.  

Phoenix slumped.  He looked dead.  The bullet had ripped apart his forehead but left his face surprisingly intact.  Arcade was amazed again by how durable Phoenix’s body was, as much as he was sickened by the sight.  There was no way that any human could survive that, but he checked Phoenix’s pulse to be sure.  He felt nothing.  

Arcade rounded on Nero.  “What the hell were you thinking?!  You had no right to do that!-”

Nero was calm, but he raised his hands in surrender.  “Arcade, I admit that I don’t fully understand this situation, but it looked to me as if you would have stood there all day if I hadn’t done that.  Whatever he was, he was dangerous.  Killing him was the humane thing to do.”

Arcade wanted to protest, but that speech had convinced him.  He looked down at the body, feeling emotion start to overwhelm him.  Not wanting Nero to think he was with Caesar’s Legion, he resisted the urge to comment in Latin.  “We should bury him before the deathclaws catch the scent.”  

They dug Phoenix as deep a grave as the dangerous location and rocky soil would allow.  Arcade had never been good with funerals and Nero hadn’t really known Phoenix, so the burial was simple and there was no memorial of any kind.  

Further up on the hill behind them, a man in power armor watched the scene curiously, his interest in the burial and the events preceding it much more than casual.  


End file.
